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My Journey into Woodturning

My journey into woodturning started when my Father-in-law, Stan Knowles, revived his life long hobby of woodturning, which would be around 1996/97. He bought a lathe and the tools, we even had to go on holiday to Derbyshire so that he could visit Craft Supplies.

I’ve previously made models as a hobby, so the act of making things was of interest to me. Initially I watched Stan from afar, so to speak, and critiqued his pieces as he made them. I sold £100’s of worth of his turnings for him at Perkins.
Eventually I bought a sycamore blank and under Stan's guidance made my first bowl, which I still have, and to be honest the bowl is rubbish, I don’t know why it’s been kept but it has……….
I dabbled a bit every now and again, but it wasn’t until Stan started doing segmented woodturning that my interest developed. It wasn’t necessarily the segmented part of woodturning that gave me the bug to turn wood, it was probably a number of things that just coincided at that particular moment. I’d sold lots of Stan’s turnings, collected a lot of his work as well, as I’d been to a few craft events at which the Village Turners displayed their wares.

Stan was continually asking if I wanted to go to the Club, and eventually I went with him to a meeting. It was one Saturday morning I forget when, and as normal Stan and I were one of the first there.
To say that I was surprised at the premises would be an understatement, it was dark, dingy and cramped, not at all what I expected when I’d seen the work that Stan produced, and the displays the Club had put on. I thought that it would be a clean, tidy and sort of business like. Stan introduced me to Tony and Richard along with some of the members who were there that day.

I continued doing a bit of turning including some segmented work. The very first piece I ever took to the club was a small open segmented bowl, which couldn’t have been that bad as it was sold at a craft fayre some time later.
I joined the club started attending the clubs events, Neville Richardson left the committee and I was elected onto it.

I would like to see the club develop and grow, and pass on the skill of woodturning. I believe that the club itself is growing in stature as time goes on, and the skill level at the club is getting higher year on year.

We are in different premises now, and we have a fantastic facility that amazes all the professional turners who come to demonstrate. The club is a credit to us all, we all play a part in its success and I am proud to part of that success.

There we go, a little insight into how I became involved in woodturning, not a great insight as I seemed to just drift into the hobby, not unlike most people I presume. I hope this has been of some interest.